


Dream About The Way It's Gonna End

by NothingEnough



Series: 47 crosses (left 4 dead 2) [1]
Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Anxiety Attacks, Canon-Typical Violence, Clit Play, F/M, Het, Homophobia, Ill-advised Sexual Encounters, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Misogyny, Racism, Tags May Change, Trans Male Character, a lot of fucking swearing, discussions of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:09:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7810270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And I reckon you got good reason to be afraid of puttin' your back to me. Ain't you?" (trans!Nick/Rochelle, set during Dead Center/The Passing)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I left this on my tablet for months in the hopes I'd get around to editing the damn thing for publication. Laziness won out and the editing didn't happen. This may be cleaned up in the future, but for now, please accept this offering, o fandom.

Her bag stretches out a good four feet away from the guy who called himself Coach. She's up against a cool metal wall. It chills against her back, draining her livelihood. The room is dark as a mausoleum but by no means quiet--there's the sleep-sounds of the three men, regular slow breathing and snorfling and the occasional fart, there's the rise and fade of the horde thundering mad outside, like they're weeping over the lack of a victim to stomp to death, and there's the little clittery noises her pistol makes whenever she shifts her hand.

Rochelle took a gender studies in film course in college. It had introduced her to the phrase "male privilege", and while she'd been subtly aware of the concept her entire conscious life, she had initially fought the phrase's inclusion in her internal lexicon. She argued there were plenty of men who were by no means privileged; they were poor or they weren't white or both; they were women who had yet to discover that truth about themselves; on and on.

If working in the goddamn media hadn't given her ample evidence that male privilege ruled their society like the fucked-up queen mother to King White Privilege and Princess Class Privilege, then the past thirteen hours provided a treasure trove to support the hypothesis. 

These three guys she met earlier today in a burning hotel are all asleep. All of 'em. The little white boy went down first (Ellis, she reminds herself, his name's Ellis) and then Coach (what grown-ass man introduces himself with a nickname, anyhow? She didn't go "Hey Coach, I'm Rotten Ball-Busting Bitch, that's what everybody calls me at my job!"). The snarky ass-hat with the white suit fell asleep long after the other two; she must've laid there for over an hour, both he and she aware the other was awake and neither saying a word, her hand sweating up the grip on her pistol and waiting for him to make a goddamn move. 

Instead, he finally started to snore.

Well, good for fucking them. She hasn't got the luxury of sleeping. She's no fool. She knows what happens to women who trust men too easily. Especially men under the titanic stress that the Infection's inflicting on all of them. Oh, she's positive if any of them knew, they'd call her paranoid, bluster about how insulting her fear is to them, but of course they'd say that shit. That means they don't have to take any responsibility for a world where every girl she knew growing up had a story. 

She heard them all. The kinds of stories told late at night, maybe fueled by a few shots of alcohol or a few puffs of a blunt, but mostly, fueled by a group of girls or women all in one place with no men in the vicinity. It's not the kind of talk she ever noticed happening in the earshot of men. Remove them from the social equation, and it was almost guaranteed that the conversation would turn to men, then one girl would lightly talk about being raped or groped like it wasn't a problem, and the rest would try to tell her that yeah, it was, and it turned into a conversational trauma unit.

She knows it isn't supposed to be her job to protect herself--it ought to be the job of the three snoozing men in this room to stop their fucking selves from becoming rapists. But she also knows that there's how it ought to be and how it is. It ought to be that she worked hard at her news station and received the benefits from her labor. It was that the sea of white faces around her habitually forgot her damn name, that they rolled their eyes and made snide asides about The Race Card if she pointed out that her ideas were stolen or ignored, that they just naturally expected her, the producer, to fetch coffee and doughnuts like the whole goddamn studio thought it was Tara Plantation, like she should be grateful they didn't make her wear a kerchief and yessuh and yes'm everybody else. It was that she never knew if she was dismissed because she was a woman or because she was black, or both, or if maybe she really just sucked that hard at her job. The fear drenched her mind and forced her to question every single exchange of words with every co-worker and boss.

No, it ought not be her job to guard herself from one of these assholes if he decides it's his job to repopulate the world. But it is. She can't trust any of them to watch her back.

So she sits and sweats up her pistol, watches them all, her heart nearly exploding from exhaustion and stress whenever any of them turns over in his sleep. Ellis is the worst. He keeps talking that blurry wordless sleep-talk and, once, he started running like Forrest Gump, his sleeping-bag jerking and bulging from the force of his kicks. That one almost gives her a heart attack. She sits for a few minutes after he quiets down, hand on her chest, feeling the palpitations shake through her ribcage and pulse against her palm, her breath high in her throat and wheezing a bit on the way out.

She falls into a dozing fitfulness a couple of hours before the rest of them wake up.

***

The next night, Rochelle settles in for another stretch of long and lonely hours. The fear might have died down since nothing happened the night before, but it's worse. Now the fear has anticipation and dread feeding it, giving it body. She sits up in her sleeping bag and she fondles her pistol like it's a close friend and her brain goes to war with itself.

She wants to trust them. She's pretty sure at this point she can rely on any of them to watch her back on the streets. A Smoker's tongue lassooed her (and the less she thought about how that goddamn monster nauseated her, the better) and Coach had been on that shit like white on rice, cutting the tongue with three licks of an axe and then shotgunning the Smoker into toxic fumes. And not long after that, a Hunter pinned her in a narrow hallway and gored at her until she felt her vision yawn and shift into a narrow tunnel of perception, all she could see was the thing's eyeless face and her own hands and her own blood. Coach had knocked that one back, too, and he'd covered Ellis as the skinny boy knelt down by her, got her on her feet, and broke out a medkit. 

All that shit should've settled her down. But now, one or two of 'em have reason to believe Rochelle owes them something. They were so nice to her, why won't she be nice to them, I gave you a hand honey now you give me a hand.

She shudders. Cracks her neck. Waits.

A few hours into her watch, she jerks awake. She thought she was dozing but she must've gone deeper than she intended, because Coach climbs up out of his sleeping bag and she damn near shits her own heart.

Coach lurches to his feet, wincing as his knees crack like gunshots. He hasn't noticed her yet. Her eyes are fully adjusted to the dark, while his blur with sleep. He stretches, yawns, looks around himself. Doesn't see her. He shuffles in the direction of the old yard-high Home Depot bucket (she thinks it was originally intended for mixing paint or cement) that, from the smell that hung around it despite it being empty when they arrived, was the safe room's only toilet.

She looks down at her pistol while he has a piss. Safety's on. She can take care of that. If she has to. Only if she has to.

Coach wraps up his business, zips up his khakis. She watches as he numbly reaches ahead and bats at empty air, tries again, then he mutters "Stupid son of a bitch". And against all odds, she almost smiles. Almost. Too sleepy to remember he's not using a urinal and he's got no way to flush.

Her not-smile goes away when he turns to get back to his sleeping bag and notices her. He cocks his head, regarding her silently, his hands drift up, palms out and fingers spread. He doesn't just see her. Coach sees her pistol.

"Hey, Ro," he says with the practiced whisper of a teacher trying to talk to another teacher while the class is taking a test. "You look like death warmed over. Why ain't you sleeping?"

"I'm not tired." Bullshit and they both know it, but she doesn't care.

"Okay. Well, I'm feeling awake now. D'you... are you gonna be okay if I just set close enough so I don't gotta whisper?"

"What for?"

"You shouldn't oughta be alone 'less you wanna be. If you druther I get back in my bag, then that's fine by me."

Her mental alarms don't go off yet, but hell if they aren't armed and ready. He might have one of his pistols on him, but she doubts it. If he makes a wrong move, she can end his life before he can regret it. She has the power here and she sees his knowledge in his face. She nods.

Coach moves with that slow grace of an old athlete, inches nearer until he sits down maybe five feet away. Far enough so she can still get off a round if he tries anything.

"Girl," he says, "you are--"

"Twenty-nine, thanks for asking. I left girl behind when I went to college."

"I'm sorry, Rochelle. Shit, anybody under forty looks like a kid to me." He shrugs. "You ain't answered me yet. Why you awake? They make this shit safe for sleeping for a reason, y'know."

"Insomnia."

"I reckon." He looks at a peeling cuticle on his right index finger, rubs at it with his thumb. "'s that the kinda insomnia for no reason, or the kind where you got a reason you ain't comfortable talking about?"

"What the hell are you trying to get at?" Coach might have the dad act down pat, but that means nothing to Rochelle. Dads were just as likely to be useless sacks of shit as anybody else. 

He gives another shrug. "Wellnow. Might not be the same issue you've got, seeing as I could sleep through it and you couldn't. But, y'know. I dunno. They make me nervous." He gestures vaguely through the shadows in the general direction of Nick and Ellis.

Her incredulity must show, because Coach grins at her, shows a lot of teeth. "... dumb, ain't it? Big motherfucker like me scared of a coupla skinnyass white boys. If I set my mind to it, I could prob'ly whittle either of 'em into toothpicks with my bare hands. But I still... just... they got all them fucking guns. And ain't nothing quite as terrifying as a white man with a lotta fucking guns and no halfassed laws getting in his way n'more. That's the kinda shit that makes me look for the nearest exit, you feel me?"

"... yeah. I feel you." It's not the same. Race isn't the only factor she's got to weigh. But it's one of them. And shit, he's right anyhow. She's so used to trusting somebody and almost,  _ almost _ forgetting how goddamned alien white people (more than anybody else) think she is, and then that somebody says some awful backwards bigoted disgusting shit, and the divide gapes so far between her and them that it makes the Grand Canyon seem like a hole a kid dug with both hands in a sandbox.

"I don't know. Maybe they all right. I think they may be. But I still get fuckin' chills when I gotta put my back to either one of 'em."

"Yeah."

"And I reckon you got good reason to be afraid of puttin' your back to me. Ain't you?"

He does not sound even slightly offended. That's what pushes Rochelle a little closer to giving Coach the benefit of the doubt. He brought it up all on his own, vague but recognizable, and his easy tone, the relaxed (despite her tight death-grip on her pistol) slouch of his body, all suggest he thinks of her as possessed of an understandable dread.

"I'd say so," she says.

He nods. "Okay. Well. You wanna talk about it?"

"Not even a little."

"You wanna sleep?"

She sneers at him. Coach kind of half-smiles. "I'm just saying, li--Rochelle. If you tired, you go on and get some sleep. I got a lotta thinking to do at present, and I'll keep a watch on you. If you don't trust me to keep an eye out, that's fine, but if you change your mind later, you let me know."

She says nothing. If he wants to stay up all damn night, that's his business, and it's not her job to talk to him, entertain him, or make him feel like a big, brave man for keeping an eye out on the little woman. Rochelle sits with her arms crossed over her bloodstained shirt and closely studies a far corner of the safe room full of shaky graffiti. She tries to read the graffiti through all the dark, listens to the regular sounds of Nick almost snoring and of Ellis grumbling and kicking around in his sleeping bag, and pretends Coach isn't there.

Her eyes shut for what feels like a half-second and the room suddenly fills with weak sunlight beaming through the bars of the exit. Ellis and Nick still lie in their respective sleeping bags. Coach still sits not far from her, a beat-to-shit paperback spread across the top of his crossed legs. He shifts a little and the ambient light lets her see it's something called  _ Hawai'i. _ She looks down at her hands. The pistol rests right next to her limp right hand.

Coach looks up at her. Smiles a little. "Leastways them circles under your eyes are fading a bit."

"... I didn't."

"You did, and I'm glad of it. You gonna be an even better shot today than you was yesterday." He closes the book. Touches the cover like he's thinking of taking it with him. Puts it down and slides it across the floor to the little cabinet of supplies by the far wall.

She'd slept. Maybe she hadn't made up for the past few nights, but hell, her head feels clearer already, the scrapes and gashes she got from the Hunter yesterday feel like a slightly itchy memory. She'd slept and Coach had kept his word, watched over her the rest of the night. If he'd laid a hand on her, she'd have woken up. She always was a light sleeper, waking up before any of her traveling companions could start some shit wasn't the real fear, the fear was they'd get a knife to her throat before she could defend herself.

Her stomach yearns and announces its vacancy with a rude grumble. "... what's the plan, then, Coach?"

"I could eat, and it sounds like you could, too. Think we oughta get these fools up?"

"I guess we've gotta."

That day, Rochelle stuck closer to Coach. She wasn't sure about the other two yet, but him, she felt sure of in a way that was hard to rationalize. And when they settled down in the mall's safe room for the night, Coach gave her a knowing look that might've panicked her before, left her numb with worry over what, exactly, his eyes were trying to say. Now, though, she thinks she knows. He's saying that when she doesn't sleep tonight, she can wake him up. Get some rest. Feel a little less desperate and alone.

But it isn't Coach who catches Rochelle tonight.

-tbc-


	2. Chapter 2

She sits on top of her bag this time, the pistol resting on the blue natty cloth next to her left knee. Maybe there was a Walton's or a Borders somewhere in this mall, because this safe room has a whole crate of books along with the expected perishables (medkits, food, tampons, ammo, water, washcloths, pens). Somebody already filled out all the crosswords and sudoku books. Rochelle settles in with a little booklight clipped to the cover of some book called  _ Iron Kissed _ .

She thinks it'll be lighthearted paranormal romance, maybe with some distracting or hilarious sex scenes with werewolves or some shit. She finishes it in three hours. She sits back and stares at the far wall for a few minutes, cracking her knuckles, then her neck. She crawls on hands and knees over to the book crate and checks just to see if any of the other Mercy Thompson books are in there. No luck.

She turns around on her knees, is about to creep back to her sleeping bag and maybe re-read  _ Iron Kissed _ for the hell of it, when the now-familiar hiss-thump of Ellis flailing in the confines of his bedding fills the room. She jumps out of her skin, back into it, scrabbles across the floor for her pistol before her mind can tell her body that it's all right, the idiot's kicking around in his sleep, just like every other night.

She gets her gun under her hand anyhow. Her other hand finds the switch on the booklight and turns it off. She can't see much more than darkness and the dull red static overlay of her eyes refusing to believe there's nothing to see. Kick-kick-kick. Squirm. He's the only one who does this. Kick-kick and now the grumbling tenor of Ellis's voice joins the racket. Like usual, he says nothing in any kind of language, not at first. She's about ready to call this a false alarm and trade her pistol for her book, when:

"... ah caint, yall g'on widdowt me, ahgaddastay," and this answers a question Rochelle had only asked in her mind. One of the things she found so damn creepy about Ellis was his sweet cheerfulness, like he didn't really understand the world was ending, like he thought this was all going to reset and go back to normal after some unknown stretch of time. Maybe that wasn't entirely from denial. Maybe it was because he was the only one dreaming. His sleeping brain forced him to confront it all every night and gave his waking mind a break.

She listens, arms folded around her calves, pistol in hand. His accent takes some parsing, but she figures out quick that Ellis is convincing his friends to evacuate without him. It's what comes after that she finds initially baffling. He talks so fast even in his sleep that it doesn't make any sense to her ears, he's just repeating the same syllables like his mouth is the barrel of a submachine gun spraying cover-fire. Around the fourth repetition, her stressed and exhausted consciousness finally puts it together:  _ No Momma no oh Jesus no _ .

Ah. Shit. She tries, and fails, to avoid the little skewer of pity in her gut. She lost plenty to the Infection, and she's no solipsistic fool; everybody else has their losses they aren't dealing with. But putting a name to Ellis's loss makes it real for her. She tries to imagine his Momma and the fate which befell her. 

It's easier to imagine than remember.

Then Ellis starts kicking like a mad bastard, his bag humps across the floor a foot or so, his trapped feet pinwheel into Nick's prone form. She hears Nick snort and grunt. A pale hand flies through the shadows and whomps Ellis smack in the face.

"Shit!"

"Fukowf," Nick says. Doesn't surprise her that he punches and swears in his sleep.

Ellis sits up. His hair is an unholy mess. His hands pass over his face. He shakes himself awake, shrugs. Looks around the safe room. Notices her. Smiles. "Oh. Hey, Ro. What'chu doing up s'late?"

"Nothing." Rochelle feels sick. She does not want him looking at her right now. She'd trade him for Coach in a heartbeat. Trying to envision what became of his Momma isn't working anymore. Now her mind fondles the bloody memory of how she got here like a twisted lover and all she wants is to look away.

"Uh." Nick whomps Ellis again, this time on the thigh. Ellis makes a gargled noise, scoots away. He stands up, still wrapped in his sleeping bag, his hands holding the opening around his waist. He hops over to her, and the only reason Rochelle leaves the gun where it is is the fact that he cannot possibly attack her while he's running a one-man potato-sack race. He sits down close to her, but not too close.

If he's trying to creep on her, he's doing a piss-poor job. He's all thoughtless friendly, and the look in his small eyes is totally innocent and curious. "You look like you got a lot on your mind," Ellis says. "D'you wanna, like, I dunno, d'you wanna talk about it?"

Please let Coach wake up. Please let Coach wake up. 

Coach snores extra-loud as if letting Rochelle know she's on her own. Fuck. 

This guy's dead last on her list of Men To Tell Anything. Ellis couldn't keep a secret to save his life. You could write it down and cut him open and stitch the paper into his thigh and within a day or so, he'd give birth to a full-fledged blabfest. Fuck. She doesn't want to do this. She barely wants to think about it but it's here all the same and she takes a deep breath and when she breathes out she says:

"... I was sent here to report on that meeting. The one CEDA had in the hotel."

Ellis nods. For once, he keeps his mouth shut.

"Just me and Jared. A cameraman. I could've done it on my own, but we already knew it wasn't safe to send one reporter anywhere near the Infection. We lost three reporters in as many days before I got the assignment. Otherwise they never would've sent me in the first place. I knew I had to go. My first shot at getting in front of a story, you know? But... it wasn't as easy as all that. My whole family, well, the whole of my family I'd want to talk to, they're all back in Ohio. Mostly Cleveland, some in Dayton. And my boyfriend, he was in Connecticut. I hadn't heard from him for a week. I didn't want to leave my parents and my brothers behind. It felt, I thought I might not see them again. You know?"

Another nod. He sits curled up, his chin resting on the puffy yellow sleeping bag stretched between his bent knees.

"But it was my one shot. And my Dad even told me to go--he heard the Infection was showing up in Ohio already, somebody brought it in after they fled New England, I guess, and Savannah was supposed to be safe. He said they'd be fine. So I went.

"So our plane touched down in the Savannah airport and I turned on my cell the second we get the OK from the pilot. Four voicemail. Nineteen text messages. The Infection, it... it got so bad so fast. When we left Ohio, the airport was closed to commercial traffic, but it was still packed. All these people were there. Trying to bust the barricades and get, I don't know, steal a damn plane and fly it themselves. We had to be escorted by about thirty cops to get to our private plane and the crowd fucking rioted when they realized we got through and they weren't going to. And then we landed. 

"And I got these texts from Wanda Wells, you know, she did the weather, and Wanda tells me rioters busted up the airport and now they're getting into the studio. This one text from my brother Dare, the only one he sent, it said 'stay away' in all caps. And about seven texts from Little LeShawn, that's my sister-in-law. Little Le was mass-texting every number she ever saved. Begging for help. Little Le, she told me they yanked Dare out a window and tore him apart right in front of her and the kids. She dragged all the kids upstairs and hid in her walk-in closet and she, she fucking begged for her babies' lives. For somebody to come help. She could hear 'em running through the house and screaming and breaking all her shit and please help her babies."

Her voice is dry. Regular. Cool. It's the voice she perfected for reporting on tragic and senseless events, shit happening in another country to people she didn't know. She can sort of see Ellis, her eyes aren't focusing well, and he's sitting motionless, his face utterly unreadable, his gaze on her.

Deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. "... the Savannah airport wasn't as bad. Smaller, you know, people were busy destroying Atlanta International, they hadn't come for the little airports yet. We got out with a smaller armed escort. It finally really hit me that I was moving through my own country like I would if I were reporting on the most shit-violent parts of Afghanistan. And how easy it was to accept that. That if I ever wanted to move across the country again, I had to get used to patdowns from men in police or army uniforms and so many guns and angry, screaming faces behind barricades asking why I get an armed escort when decent white families can't get a goddamn plane ticket."

Ellis jerks, like she slapped him aurally. "... white folks're fucking awful."  


"Not enough of 'em to matter much anymore, are there?" Now she's rolling and she can't stop, couldn't stop even if Coach and Nick both woke up, couldn't stop if both rooms to the safehouse busted inward and let in a herd of Tanks. "So Jared and I get escorted to our hotel. Not the one the CEDA meeting was supposed to be in, nearby it on River Street. No Infected, but the whole damn world feels different anyhow. We get to the hotel and I have to show my press credentials and Jared shows his and we're assigned a room with five other reporters and two health-care workers. Those two poor bastards got so many questions lobbed at 'em, you'd have thought they personally invented the Infection.

"We waited overnight and didn't sleep. And the conference was due to happen the next day. We get ready to head out, they can't drive us anywhere because people are blocking the roads. People trying to flee Savannah. People trying to flee the islands into Savannah. People carrying guns around the squares downtown and cars slamming into other cars and people panicking and crying and trying to help anybody who got hit or trampled. You know. You were there same as me. It was like the Infection drove everybody insane even if they hadn't caught it yet. 

"So we get escorted to the hotel on foot and Jared's got his camera in one hand and I'm holding the bag for the mikes and the memory cards, and he's latched his free hand onto my free wrist and I let him. We lost a reporter on the way, she just got knocked back into the crowd pressing in on the circle of Army escorts and I see someone grab her by her long blonde hair and she's just gone.

"We made it to the hotel. The conference had already started. We didn't have time to object to being shut out of the first two hours. The National Guard had spent two days blocking off the Savannah Bridge, trying to keep the massive horde inside of South Carolina. I guess somebody in the Guard figured they couldn't afford to destroy the bridge. Too close to too many unInfected people, and people would panic more if a major escape route exploded, and there wasn't any reliable way to warn the populace.

"I remember... watching while CEDA explained what they'd learned about some of the more complicated Infected. They had Boomers up on the board and they were explaining that they'd weaponized Boomer bile and why that was useful. I looked at my cell phone because it buzzed. It was just telling me there was no signal. Didn't surprise me. I was more surprised I got any signal at all when I arrived. So I put my phone in my pocket and I looked up, and there were those panoramic windows behind the suit giving the speech. I could see the Savannah River in the background, and the Bridge, and there was this fucking solid unending line of Infected just marching across it. More lining the riverbed on the South Carolina side of the river. Had to be thousands, maybe tens of thousands. And they ran in the River and drowned and they fell of the Bridge and died and it didn't matter because there was just too many of them. I saw a few of the soldiers posted on the Bridge fall off, one guy got Jockeyed straight off the edge and another just got pinned by a group of Infected who all tumbled down with him.

"All these people falling and screaming and dying, and they busted the barricade and it was on to River Street.

"I grabbed Jared and jerked him by the arm out of the meeting, right when all the CBs and radios and shit in the room lit up like Christmas trees and voices started screaming about being compromised and evacuation and shit. Jared said he wanted to stay. He was... he thought if he had to be anywhere, it'd be with the men with the guns. We had a screaming argument about it right there outside the meeting and I guess I scared him shitless, because he'd never seen me raise my voice before. I said I... I said my whole fucking family had died in the past day and I wasn't about to die when all they wanted was to see one of us make it out alive. But he wanted to stay. So I wished him good luck and told him to keep the camera running even if they threatened to shoot him, and he said I didn't need to tell him that, there had to be some kind of record. He gave me his cell phone and said I could use the camera on it if I needed it. I turned around and left. I should've made him come with me.

"See, Ellis, I couldn't just stay behind a wall of guns, I had to... I don't know... I wanted to stay alive and I couldn't trust the Army or CEDA to keep me that way. And I knew Jared would get no good footage with an escort, and I knew the Army would probably take all his memory cards and shit anyhow, and maybe shoot him for good measure. If anybody was gonna document this story for the rest of the unInfected world or the aliens who land here in ten thousand years and wonder where everybody went, well, it'd have to be someone on the street.

"The rest of it... you probably can guess. I ran. I shot as much video as I could get. I actually caught the first wave of Infected hitting our sector of downtown, and a few soldiers getting chewed up by the horde, just stomped into nothing under thousands of bare feet. I ran. I hid the first night. Found a safe room in Bonaventure the second night. On the third day I finally had to accept that I had to shoot a gun and not just a camera. So I started stealing guns from dead people and defending myself. Then I heard the same rumor you did. Evacuations from the top floor of that same fucking hotel, if you could make it through the horde. I shot my way up and ran out of ammo on the next-to-last floor. I found Jared when I went looking for a replacement weapon. The horde found him first."

Here's where she caps off the story with a pithy summary of the safely-distant events on which she's reporting: something to give the story a serious weight in the viewer's mind before she shrugs off the tragedy tone in her voice and turns it over to the sports reporter. Rochelle's got nothing. Harder to say shit like  _ A normal day ends in senseless violence _ or  _ Meanwhile, residents huddle in evacuation centers such as the one behind me and wonder when they'll be allowed home _ when she's the one huddling and when it's her normal goddamn life which ended.

She risks a look in Ellis's direction. He sits folded up in a little ball, same as before, chin on his knees and most of his body lost in that ugly yellow sleeping bag. He idly works his bottom lip between his teeth. Chapped. Fool needs to drink more water. He's not looking anywhere in her direction, doesn't seem to have heard a single word she said. Then he opens his mouth, closes it, considers, opens it again. Rochelle braces herself for the typical tripe he must have in store for her. Maybe it'll be  _ God's got a plan and we see through a veil darkly _ , or  _ At least you've got us now _ , or that old chestnut,  _ It's hard now but it'll get better in time. _

"... what was on the voicemail?"

"What?"

"The voicemail. You said you gotta buncha 'em. But not what was in 'em. What was... wait, it's personal, ain't it? Don't worry about it then, ain't none of my never-mind--"

"My father." Rochelle glances skyward, like there's an escape route on the ceiling if only she can spot it. "... my mom couldn't call. She was. My father just wanted to say he loves me. He kept calling because he wasn't, I guess he didn't know if any of 'em were getting through. And then he stopped."

As she stares at the ceiling, the heat of tears swims over her eyes, and for the first time since the Infection really got going... she feels it. This thing comes slouching out of her unconscious mind, a thing Lovecraftian in its dimensions, too vast to be properly understood by her human eyes or her finite brain. It slithers and walks with no legs and many, and it knocks on every gentle and weak part of her--her throat, her stomach, her heart, her eyes--and it talks in a chorus of the voices of every person she ever loved who died and tells her to let it out, let it speak with her mouth, it will tell all the world of her rage and her agony and her dread terror, all she has to do is let it.

No. No. She won't. Rochelle looks straight up now, forcing the tears to trickle back into the ducts. Her hands press hard over her own heart and the pressure tells her she's really breathing in spite of the sense that she can't get any air, rise and fall, rise and fall, her heart still beats and she breathes and this will pass. Maybe if Ellis was Coach she'd have let go. But probably not. She has no goddamn time for grief. She's too busy surviving. If she starts now she has no inkling of when she'll stop. She does not want their comfort and she does not want the horde to hear her pain. So Rochelle swallows past the thick in her throat and blinks until the flood subsides and the beast grumbles and crawls back into her unthinking soul. It'll be back. Hopefully when she's ready for it.

She hears a soft thump, feels it through the floor, followed a shaky wet noise. She jerks and her hand finds the pistol before her eyes fully process what they're seeing. Ellis sits a little closer, on top of his sleeping bag now. He holds out something to her. Gives it another shake. A bottle of Aquafina.

She takes it. Her hands shake and she can't quite pop the seal at first. She gets it on the third try and she drinks the flat warm water in four gulps. Drops the cheap bottle by her pistol.

"I'm sorry," she says. A lifetime of apologizing for her emotions and the discomfort they aroused in men summon it out of her as if by sorcery.

"... don't be like that," he says. "Hell, it's gotta come out sometime. I'm just sorry you got stuck with me. I ain't real good at making other people feel better. All's I can think is that you got through a hot mess the best you could, but it sucks something fierce, and I'm sorry I can't do better than that."

Rochelle shrugs. "Sometimes that's all that needs saying."

"Yeah, but I'm supposed to be a big talker, I'm kinda notorious for it back home on The Island. Like this one time, Keith--you remember my boyfriend Keith--he had to give this five-minute speech in class, and he didn't know what to talk about, so I said, well, why not make it about that time the cops pulled him over for goin' twenny above the limit and he bullshitted his way outta it by tellin' the cop he just hadda get home 'cause he had to shit? The speech was supposed to be about persuasion, and I reckoned that was the most persuasive Keith ever was, you know, it was prob'ly the only time Keith and the cops ever crossed paths what didn't end with him in the back of a squad car or dodging a buncha gunfire. And he said..."

On Ellis goes, and Rochelle feels the very last facial expression she expected creep over her face as he gabs: a smile. She had assumed Keith (if he was a real person and not some elaborate power fantasy Ellis constructed to cope with the apocalypse) was, in fact, his buddy; she had no reason to suspect anything else of them. Until now, of course, and the cheerful son of a bitch keeps weaving his yarn and he has no damn idea what he just admitted. She waits, and just when Ellis describes the creative visual aids Keith used for his speech, Rochelle can actually see the realization headbutt him. His narrow eyes pop wide open and his shoulders slump like they're wilting in a high heat. She can't see it through the dark, but she guesses he's probably turning a charming shade of red.

"I said boyfriend, didn't I."

"Yes, you did."

"... fuck. Look, uh, boyfriend ain't even the word for it, really, we just had a, well, a thing where if neither of us had anybody else, you know, and I don't, please quit laughing at me."

She's not laughing, but she guesses her grin is close enough to make Ellis uncomfortable. She squashes it back into something more neutral. "You don't have to explain a thing to me, Ellis. I'm not laughing."

"... okay, it's just," and he gives this look to the shifting loose shapes of Coach and Nick still dead to the world a few feet away, a look she doesn't recognize at first, since she had yet to see Ellis appear worried about anything before now. "... it's just, just don't say nothin' about it 'round them. They might think less o' me."

She doesn't think Coach is capable of thinking any less of Ellis, certainly not about however Ellis defines his sexuality or whoever he's slept with. But saying  _ they _ is easier than saying  _ Nick _ , he of the frequent exclamations of 'ass-clown', or 'that buttfucking Hunter', or 'those giggling cocksuckers'. She guesses if she were in Ellis's place, she wouldn't want Nick knowing either. "Sweetie, quit worrying about it. They aren't going to hear about it from me."

He nods. His head nearly splits in half thanks to a yawn.

"Sounds like somebody's up past his bedtime."

"... you oughta get back to sleep, too."

"I'm good."

"You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

He doesn't sound like he believes her. But he wishes her a good night anyhow, drags his sleeping bag back away from hers (but not too close to the others, either), crawls back in. After about ten minutes, his breathing clicks over like a song changing on a CD into the deeper, slower inhalations of sleep. She sits there for some long while after, thinking. Ellis made her laugh, a little, and he helped her forget about the beast of grief living in her for a while longer. And when she'd nearly lost it, he had offered her... well, she guesses you'd call it respect. 

Grandpa Quentin died when she was fourteen, and she cried on her boyfriend Frank's shoulder for an hour after she heard the news. Frank started out petting her back and smoothing his hands over her braids, and ended up half-pinning her to the bed and trying to fuck some happiness back into her. She fought him off and he called her a dumb crazy bitch, she called him a selfish motherfucker, and that was the story of how her first real boyfriend dumped her. Frank wasn't exactly the only man she ever knew who thought the only thing that could ever make a woman feel better was his cock. 

But she turns over the past forty minutes or so, and she honestly thinks that fucking the grief out of Rochelle had never so much as crossed Ellis's mind. He knew his helplessness in the face of her grief and he hadn't patronized her with any bullshit platitudes and he'd kept his hands to himself. Same with Coach. Coach tried to reach her by comparing her fears to his own, then by lightening her burden by making it his responsibility.

She lies down for a few minutes. Almost falls asleep. When it creeps up heavy on her eyelids, she crawls over to Coach and touches his shoulder. He wakes up easy, none of the anxious jerking and wide-eyed panic she sees in Nick and Ellis and herself, he just opens his dark eyes and sees her and he nods. She gets back into her bag and she hears him fumbling around in the book-crate, and as she drifts off, she hears Coach mutter "Fuck yeah, got me some Michner."

-tbc-


	3. Chapter 3

The next night finds them in Raymond with a lot on their collective minds. Nothing went the way they planned. They ought to be on the road, heading West toward the hope and safety of New Orleans. Already the city held a talismanic magic to Rochelle; all her running and killing made her think more kindly of the military and being in its custody, her phones were all dead and there was no way for her to record her tale except in her memory. She was ready to let somebody else shoot the guns for her.

She'll never admit it out loud. It's a weakness that, she anticipates, will be met with eye-rolling and perhaps some muttering about women and their weak wills, but God help her, she thinks it.

And because they planned to keep driving, of course, the roadways are blocked and the bridge is up and they have to run a few more goddamn laps just to get out of this idiot county. She spent most of their run for a safe room trying to calm Ellis's nerves when it came to his instantaneous crush on Zoey, sniping at Nick's germophobia, and agreeing with Coach that they ought to focus more clearly on their mission. They found the saferoom, another giant metal box of a room with no time for privacy or for air circulation.

They scrounge up something which can, in liberal terms, be described as a meal, and now comes the lying back and waiting to fall asleep, and now comes Rochelle's long wait. Longer now than it's ever been. This safe room is somewhat lacking--either nobody had the time to stock it with supplies, or the citizens of Raymond saw fit to strip it whenever they passed through; no sleeping bags, no blankets, no pillows, no towels which aren't already crusty with crud. She sits against the wall nearest to Coach, her pistol a well-known weight in her right hand. She sniffs and she waits.

None of them fall asleep. By tonight, the sounds of these three conking out before she does are as familiar as the vague pervasive odor in each breath she takes. None of that. She hears Nick turn over and grumble, hears Ellis squirming and his bare feet squeaking on the metal floor, hears Coach roll from one side to the other and the popping of his back. She gets why. The bursts of rain that come and go outside mean it's even more humid now than it usually is in Georgia, and apparently, nobody told this goddamn state that it's October and it's supposed to be fall. The unseasonable warmth outdoors becomes a fucking hotbox in here. She's not moving and yet sweat tickles down her back and beads on her upper lip like she's running from a Tank.

After maybe half an hour (no way to tell anymore, she never wore a watch), she sees Nick bury his face in the medkit he's trying to use for a pillow. "Stupid motherfucking goddamn backwoods hick bullshit," he says, his voice this grinding level chant, like the world's angriest priest saying ten Fuck Yous. "Hit up the casino boats in Savannah, Nick, easiest goddamn money you'll ever make, what the fuck was I thinking?"

"... son, you got to let up," Coach says, his voice slurry and irritated. "Ain't nobody gonna get any rest if we gotta listen to your bullshit."

"Who the fuck can sleep in this, I ask you? It's hotter than a sunburnt nutsack in here! Shit, we might as well pack it up and keep going, I'm not--"

The Fear knocks on Rochelle's forehead and says hello, did she miss it? This is even worse than the first night. Not only is she trapped in a sealed room with three men with too much weaponry, the heat is already doing its pissy work, winding them up, leaving them exhausted and uncomfortable and angry and unable to do anything about the first two. This is the kind of room and the kind of night when a light argument over who was supposed to throw the next handful of dice ended with somebody inside a chalk line.

Only there's no one to draw the chalk line and nobody to slap on handcuffs and no jail to take in the offender.

She rests the heel of her hand on the top of her pistol. She's about to draw when Ellis's voice cuts through Nick's diatribe (now discussing the wisdom of permitting the south to rejoin the United States after the Civil War) with: "God _damn_ it, I am 'bout ready to lose my shit if you don't quit. Nobody gives not one fuck what you think of the heat. We all know it's fuckin' hot. Bitchin' about it ain't gonna make a AC magically appear. Dry your tears and put your little dick back in your pants, and stop tryin' t' sell whadda big brave man you are for threatening to leave in the middle of the goddamn night. Jesus baldheaded Christ, man!"

A stirring noise. She sees Coach reach out in the dark. "Where are you, Ellis? Touch my hand. I feel healed in my soul. Wanna see if you could do anything about this goddamn knee."

The two of them laugh, and Rochelle laughs along with them, she's so tense it's got to come out somehow. Nick doesn't laugh. He doesn't get really pissed off and he doesn't scream at Ellis and he doesn't start shooting. He shuts the hell up. Good.

At least, she starts out thinking it's good. An hour goes by, during which she hears Coach, then Ellis, respectively, sit up and peel off their sweatstained clothes--Coach down to his undershirt and his boxers, Ellis straight down to his briefs. She feels unthreatened by both gestures. Neither one of them seems to understand she's still awake; they're moving with the thoughtless desperation of the overheated seeking something resembling relief. Eventually the familiar song of snoozing reaches her.

Only it's not the same. It's missing one of the three-part harmony.

Rochelle's heart almost breaks her ribcage when Nick stands up. He takes a couple of unsteady steps, like pins and needles numb his balance. He moves to one of the hanging supply cabinets and the noises of him digging around for a bottle of water follow. Rochelle hears him drink and she expects him to put the bottle back, or maybe pitch it at Ellis or Coach, but no. He just stands there. Staring at the open cabinet.

He looks ghostly in the grimy now-off-white suit, and it occurs to her that the only thing Nick's taken off so far are his shoes. For all his complaining about the heat, he lacks the sense to at least take off that damn jacket. She's got a reason to keep her clothes on. He's got none. What the hell is his damage?

She watches him, fascinated, overcome with the warm secret safety of spying on someone too self-absorbed to notice. She doesn't exactly have much else to distract her, and he is, after all, the last X in their four-part equation, the only number still unknown to her. Nick's covered her too many times for her not to trust him slightly. He's also been a raging asshole too many times for her to let go of her wariness. So she keeps silent and observes Nick drain the bottle dry. She sees the thick white line of his arm straighten out and hears the empty noise of the plastic bottle returning to the cabinet. He stands there, his neck cracks as he looks up at nothing in particular.

He lets go of the hanging cabinet. His hands cup the small of his back, they look dark and distinct against his suit, she can see him fan his fingers out, slowly rub up, then down. The gesture is so familiar to Rochelle that she thinks before thinking--he's cramping. She gets cramps like that when she hits certain peaks in her cycle, and she can think of too many months when she woke up and held her back in exactly this fashion as she limped to the bathroom in search of the ibuprofen.

No, of course he can't be cramping, Rochelle nearly laughs at her stupidity. He just fucked up his back rolling around and tantrumming on the floor. Then Nick starts opening all the other hanging cabinets, peering at each shelf in turn. None of them are near her wall, so he fails to notice he's being watched. He opens the second-to-last cabinet and pulls a plasticy-sounding bag off a shelf. He holds it up close to his face. Then he reaches inside, more crinkling noises.

Nick sighs. 

Rochelle cannot believe how much pity that births in her--any pity for him at all is fucking irrational. But he sounds a particular kind of miserable. The bag crinkles back onto the shelf. He half-turns and stops to rub at his back again and she sees he's holding a squareish thing the size of a playing card.

Rochelle knows what that is. She's used too many since her eleventh birthday to not know it. He's holding a pad.

The fear dies, tears out of her consciousness from the force of a storm of guilt. Shit. This is some private shit and Nick didn't choose whether she needed to know it or not. No wonder he's so fucking mad all the time. No wonder he didn't want to stay. He's just as fucking scared as she is. Of being found out, mostly, she imagines, but also being found out and being treated like a weird novel object. Or being found out and being raped. Nick hasn't had the benefit of talking much to Coach or Ellis, he's got no reason to trust any one of them.

She should keep quiet and pretend she's asleep. He's just standing there, holding the pad in one hand and flipping it back and forth against the palm of the other hand. He'd never know. Rochelle can act like she doesn't know. But fuck. The fear murdered her sense of safety, and her capacity to trust, and getting more than four hours a night.

She's so goddamn tired of being afraid.

"Nick."

He stops dead. There's a thump and a scuttle and she realizes he dropped the pad and kicked it away, as though he's a teenager badly hiding a bag of green from his mom.

"What," Nick says.

She looks at their companions. No sign either of them is awake. No sense in changing that. She gets up and eases nearer to him. She stops a couple of feet back. He can't grab the pistol from here, and she can't startle him anymore than he is already.

"Look," Rochelle says. "I... I'm not gonna lie. I've been awake this whole time. I saw you getting that pad."

Nick stares at her. She can't see his eyes but can imagine their intensity, and she fights an urge to squirm. After waiting an incredibly awkward ten seconds, she goes on. "... so I may have just figured out that, uh, I don't know what words you'd use, but, I mean, just, if you'd rather have tampons I've got a stash." This last she speaks so quickly it sounds to her ears like one long word.

He stares and stares. Rochelle clears her throat and stares back. She really doesn't know how to handle this. She had an auntie who Rochelle thought was her uncle until she was sixteen years old. Then her auntie came out and most of the family acted like she was never born. Mom didn't. Mom probably knew something was up a long time ago. Maybe not what was up, but something. She stuck by her sister and Rochelle stuck by her auntie. And like Nick, Rosie coming out wasn't a choice--she told her wife and her wife told her cousin DeeDee and DeeDee told fucking everybody willing to pick up the phone when she called.

But she knew Rosie before her transition started, had a good relationship with her, and the hardest part was switching pronouns and names (which, really, got easier with a few weeks of conscious practice). She barely knows Nick, other than the little hints and jabs he drops (and she thinks most of those are bullshit anyhow). But what the hell does Nick want?

"... I don't need 'em. Yet. I'm... getting ready for when I do need 'em."

She tilts her head towards the corner farthest from Coach and Ellis. Nick nods and follows after her.

They sit and for a long spread of minutes, Nick says nothing. She waits. Rochelle is really goddamned practiced at waiting by now. Eventually he talks, not much, no ugly details, enough for her to fill in a few blanks. He talks about his body refilling with estrogen and how he doesn't dare look for T. About never being able to take off his clothes no matter how gross they become or how hot it gets.

It's not so much what he says as how he says it. His voice acquires this weak tone Rochelle doesn't like, devoid of his trademarked brassy attitude. She analyzes it like a journalist (during the interview, his tones grow quiet, hesitant), and feels it like a human. Hard to be terrified of somebody you pity. Especially when it's this damn hot.

"... can't even take a damn piss unless everybody's asleep," she hears him say, and realizes she'd tuned him out for half a minute. Shit.

"Nick," she says, and he sort of jolts in place, and yes indeed, he's just as scared as she is. Rochelle knows what jumping from an all-natural adrenaline shot looks like. "I'm almost certain neither Coach or Ellis give a damn whether you stand or squat. But if I'm wrong, and if they did, they'll have to dodge. Otherwise they'll catch these hands."

He stares at her again, longer this time, eyes so narrow they almost disappear into the ghostly triangular shape of his face. "... the fuck makes you think I need your help?"

"You've never been on the Internet, I guess, or you'd know it's always best to call for blackup."

Jesus, she hasn't thrown that phrase out since that long-ago gender studies class--before that, she'd spent hours on /b/ just to prove she could. It takes Nick a full five seconds to process it. He kind of snorts in that embarrassed way white people do when they hear a joke they've got no right to tell. "I can't even type. Just hunt-and-peck."

"Not really a skill we need anymore."

"Yep."

She wipes her brow, feels sweat surge through her pores to replace the sheen she stripped. "Look. The point I'm trying to make is you're not alone, all right?"

"Right. Because you're enlightened." His gritty voice gives that last word the grandiosity of capitalization. "You don't give a shit about what my junk looks like and live and let live. Am I right?"

"Uncle Jonathan's corncob pipe! I do give a shit. Why wouldn't I give a shit? You can't even pee 'cause you're afraid Coach and Ellis are gonna treat you like how I've…"

"--did they--"

"No. No, no, no. But fuck. I haven't slept because they might. That you might." She chews her bottom lip. Teases a strip of skin free, spits it out, feels a stinging line right next to the crease in the middle of her lip. Doesn't look in Nick's direction.

"Yeah, well. I did time. I'm used to it."

"What for?"

"Usedta make fake IDs." Rochelle doesn't smell bullshit, not like some of the other hints Nick dropped regarding his glorious criminal past. "Before I figured any of my shit out. I met a girl outside a bar I sometimes picked up chicks at. She just got thrown out. They carded her on the way in and she'd started transitioning and hadn't got her ID updated. Didn't let her in 'cause most bouncers are shitbags. I got her a coffee and we talked. I got mad at what she hadda deal with. Ended up getting a kit from a friend in Shantytown. Made her a real ID. Hadda charge her 'cause I hadda eat. She sent her friends to me. Their friends sent their friends. I guess eventually somebody got arrested and the pigs wanted to know who made her license and, lo, it came to pass that I was pinched."

"You know, that's a better story than knowing how to get blood out of a wedding dress."

"Fuck you. I can do that, too."

"Fuck you, too, Nick."

A little thin smile cuts across his face. "Still scared of me?"

"I don't know." It's out, and she knows it's all the fucking training and hard experience, but she feels a thrill of panic anyhow, thinks she should've been nicer and lied to save his delicate man-feelings. "I got a lot of scared to go around."

"Yeh? Just means you're smart. I'm," he clears his throat, half-shrugs his jacket off his shoulders, tugs it back on. "I'll just go find another corner to lie in."

Rochelle doesn't sleep that night. She can't stop thinking.

***

The next night finds them caught in Raymond still, but, thank whatever amorphous non-existent deity watching and laughing at their world's demise, in a better safe room. Actually, it's a safe staircase: reinforced doors from the second to third floors, little nests of human activity (sleeping bags, empty cans, empty buckets, graffiti demanding that occupants THROW THE BUCKET OUT THE DAMN WINDOW BEFORE YOU GO **IT FUCKING STINKS IN HERE** ) on the upper and lower loft.

Ellis doesn't think about it, he just matter-of-factly crawls into the nearest sleeping-bag and punches out for the night. Coach and Nick don't make a move. They both kind of turn their heads and regard Rochelle standing at the top of the staircase, neither saying anything.

If that had happened last night, she'd have opened fire.

Now her hands play with the intimately-familiar texture of her pistol grips, and now the pistols aren't lovers, they're something more like the old Raggedy Ann doll she had inherited at birth from her Grandma Rene. She used to pitch a fit if she didn't have that thing in bed with her at night. She remembers studying that doll with her fingertips the way she studies her pistols: tracing and retracing the hard cold smoothness of the plastic button-eyes, the rough warmth of cloth transitioning to the slight cool of the painted mouth. They calm her. Help her focus.

So focus. There's not enough room on either loft for three people. She can not-sleep on the stairs. Or she can not-sleep on a loft with one of her traveling companions. She isn't sure she can not-sleep. She isn't sure she'll be right for shooting tomorrow if she not-sleeps one more time.

"... y'all better not be waiting on me," she mutters. "I'm sleeping down there and I don't give a ripe fuck what you do."

She turns around, wobbles just a touch at the top step, and makes her way safely to the lower loft. She can hear them talking indistinctly in the background, Nick's rounded, nasal New England at odds with Coach's commanding Southern bassoon. Doesn't pay them much attention.

Because there's one thing she's not feeling tonight. She's still wary, she's not a fool, she can hear a few lone Infected across the street, breaking glass and kicking ass. Rochelle's just not wary of the three men she's bottled up with. Not as much. At the least, she can take any of 'em in a quick draw.

She crawls into a sleeping bag and tries not thinking of how she used to feel nauseous when she had to sleep in a hotel bed, no matter how clean the sheets smelled. After a few hazy minutes, she almost falls asleep, until the sound of Nick walking down the stairs rouses her. She can now identify which of the three is approaching her by their walks. Ellis almost shuffles when he's not running. Coach has a graceful, heavy step. Nick, by some talent she's never witnessed in anybody before, walks like a smug asshole.

He hops in the other sack and she lies there, wide awake now that he's near. Not because she's scared of him, per se, just because it's the closest any of them has gotten to her at night. She can just barely feel the press of the edge of his sleeping bag against hers, and when he turns over, the zippers rub up on one another and make a metallic zingy sound.

She lies there awake and she can tell from his breathing that he is, too, and wonders what he's waiting for.

Once Coach finally starts snoring and Ellis starts kicking in his sleep, Rochelle breathes a sigh of relief. Relief? What the fuck for? Why is it all right they're asleep and she and Nick aren't? Why isn't she tired anymore?

Right about then, she feels the itch. Not the mild itch of her scalp reacting to days without a shower. The Itch. It starts deep in the pit of her stomach and crawls down a loose line until it blossoms out over her lips, warms up along the folds of her hood, settles down into a nearly-painful needlepoint of heat targeted on her clit.

Great Odin's fucking raven.

She doesn't want to be hot for Nick. He's the opposite of her type. After Frank, she always dated guys who fit certain parameters, and Nick doesn't fit a damn one of them. He's got dead eyes, he's nowhere near right with a therapist, and he's a runner. She's seen enough runners to know one right off, and he'll run from anything that smells like a healthy relationship.

But shit. She might die tomorrow. Or before she finishes her next breath. That's the one fear that's left. The last skeleton in her mental closet. She can't talk that fear out and she can't fuck it out, either, but maybe she can prove it wrong for a night.

She feels a hint of wet slick the inner lips of her pussy and that settles it. Fuck commitment. She'll take whatever Nick's got on offer. Even if it's a no.

Rochelle slides her hand across her stomach, reaches for the edge of her sleeping bag, finds the zipper-tab on the inside. She gives it a tug and stops instantly. The noise is intolerably loud. No sound of anyone waking up upstairs. She unzips it down to her hip. She lies back, hand warming the curve of her chest right beneath her left breast, and waits.

After the longest minute in her life, she hears the echo of her action: Nick half-unzipping his bag. He sort of scrambles out of his and his sock-covered foot hooks her bag's zipper and pushes it down the rest of the way. He slides in alongside her just as she works open the button on her jeans.

It's quick work. She hates to admit it but all the fucking adrenaline and the high of exhaustion leaves her stupid-horny and Nick, for all his flaws, knows how to handle her. His fingers cradle her pussy through her panties, his hand is so deliciously cold against her heat, he doesn't try to dive into her drawers (and thank God for that, their hands are barely clean). Thin lips find her ear and ask her if she likes her clit being played with.

"Yes, idiot," she says, amazed how she sounds aroused and irritated at the same time.

"How? Like this--" He demonstrates, the flat of his palm presses hard against her, giving her leverage to grind "--or this--" he draws back and a fingertip circles her now-throbbing clit, working the hood through the cloth "--or this--" and he makes a V against either side of her, the sides of his fingers squeezing the base and oh _fuck_ she moans and she can _hear_ him smirk.

Rochelle had forgotten what letting go felt like. She damn sure remembers now. Her hips rise off the pilled felt sleeping-bag lining, up into Nick's rough hand, sink back down only to swell up again. His other hand slides under her with a practiced push and she expects him to go for her tits but he just eases his arm around her, hand on her shoulder blade, and fucking works her heat. She sucks her lip between her teeth and holds it there, can't quite keep the moans from being born but she can stop them from making their way to any prying ears.

Automatically she reaches for him, and is surprised once again to feel the gritty expensive cotton of his slacks, he didn't even undo his pants, did he expect nothing from her? Well, he doesn't stop her from feeling him out, she powers through the awesome distraction of unyielding fingers stroking her until she can feel her clit getting bigger in his grip. Finds the zipper-tab. Yanks it down. Finds the loose slick of his boxer-briefs and Jesus Christ he's hard. So hard she can feel the shape of the head cresting outside the foreskin through his boxers.

Now she's not sure what to do. She tries. She just has to hope she doesn't hurt him by doing something wrong. She should ask but she can't keep enough air to ask. She tightens two fingers around the base of his cock, hears his breath catch, Rochelle half-moans "Now fuck my hand" and he _growls_ and his hips snap forward like a piston roaring to life.

She guesses they both needed it, because she hits her first end after a few sweaty minutes of stroking and grinding up and muttering "yeah baby that's right", she spasms against him and bites hard on his neck as she gives up to the light--and he doesn't stop. He shifts his hand so his index and pinky are free to tickle over the fullness of her lips while his ring and middle relentlessly pulse around her clit. Rochelle chokes on his intensity and sucks on his neck and bites harder and here she goes again, her fingers stammering around his cock and losing their grip, and--he doesn't stop.

Motherfucker doesn't quit until the fourth one slams into her and she feels like a wall collapsed somewhere in her brain and Nick somehow senses that's her limit. His hand finally gives her pussy a break before the poor girl drowns. He still hasn't come but she can see in the dark how he's grinning like he's satisfied. He takes her wrist in his hand and pulls her free of him.

"... What?"

"Doan worry abouddit."

"The fuck you talking about, Boston?"

"The fuck I just said, Cleveland. I don't. Usually. Takes a lotta work. I'm too fucking tired to put the work in."

"You sure? I can--"

"You can. And I'm sure. Maybe later."

"I'll remember you said that."

Nick tries to crawl into his own bag. She lets him.

***

The next night, Rochelle falls asleep first.

  
-end-


End file.
